


Humanity

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-06
Updated: 2007-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-19 03:06:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12401811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Pride yourself on being human. A witch. Pureblood. Untainted. Random little oneshot on Azkaban and Bellatrix Lestrange.





	Humanity

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

A/N: Random little one-shot of Azkaban. At least that’s what I think it is. I go off topic quite a bit. I do tend to do that. Ask anyone who knows me. Anyway, please read. And then review. I live off reviews. They are the only things in my worthless and pathetic existence that keeps me going.

 

 

Humanity

 

(Pride yourself on being human. A witch. Pureblood. Untainted)

We’re not sure when Bellatrix Lestrange went; whether she just snapped and disappeared one day or whether it was a slow process, gradually fading away into nothing.

The wizarding world claims that it does not have the death penalty.

(Lies)

Sentencing people to lifetime in Azkaban. Not a life sentence. An execution. A slow death that kills the soul and destroys the mind and bleeds the very essence from you, leaving you a shell, a hollow mockery of what you once were.

(Replacement)

But your body needs something inside it if you ever get out. So you will create a new you, like Bellatrix Lestrange did. It is insane in Azkaban; the inmates have known nothing but insanity for the entire time they spend in there.

(The afterlife)

Most new personalities are therefore insane.

Sirius Black was the one exception. Altered, perhaps, by the twelve years he spent locked away in the dark with but still, fundamentally, the same person. He was still buried in there. Sirius Black was not a shell. He was still Sirius Black.

At first, people called him the only one to have ever escaped from Azkaban. When the Dark Lord rose to power, he liberated many of his followers, and Sirius Black became the first to have escaped.

(Wrong)

The Dark Lords followers were different, insane, utterly different people to those who were sent in there at first. Bellatrix Lestrange, Algernon Rookwood, Antonin Dolohov, all of them, were left inside Azkaban, their bodies sent out to follow the Dark Lord, insane, blind, unable to understand reason or compassion, having been deprived of it for so long.

And Sirius Black was still the only one to ever have escaped Azkaban.

Back to Bellatrix. She died in Azkaban. Did anyone mourn her? Her husband may have, perhaps, but he died at the same time.

Everyone dies, she reminds herself.

(Most people don’t die to live in a shell)

We want to know where Bellatrix Lestrange went, because as evil as that woman was, as depraved and perverse, the creature that stole her face and emerged from Azkaban was a thousand times worse.

You forget a lot of things here.

(Pride yourself on being human)

She needs her pride to keep the monster going.

(A witch)

And she’ll do magic again when her Dark Lord liberates her, and burn this place to the ground.

(Pureblood)

Pureblood is all most of them have left.

(Untainted)

She will always be pure, no matter how ragged her clothes get, how tangled her hair gets, how hollow her cheeks get, or how hoarse her voice gets from maniacal screaming.

(Need to scream)

Screaming lets you know you’re alive, when your throat burns after hours of use, it’s just to remind you that you are still breathing and they have not won yet.

(Pureblood)

She is pure.

(Untainted)

Clean.

(Human)

Not human.

Humans have no place in Azkaban.

(Humans die here)

To keep yourself alive, you have to make sacrifices.

(Are you human as long as you’re alive?)

(Are you alive as long as you’re human?)

She keeps breathing, and she’s alive.

She keeps breathing, but she’s not human. Not anymore. Humanity fell away the moment she entered this cold, dark place.

She’s left Azkaban now.

She’s still in that cold, dark place.

(Pride yourself on being a witch. Pureblood. Untainted

Inhuman.)

This is the death of humanity.

 


End file.
